Normandy, from Giverny to Mont Saint-Michel

From the Seine to the bay of Mont Saint-Michel

The trip begins at Giverny, Monet’s home, then follows the Seine to the sea. The painter lived there from 1883 until his death in 1926. He created a flower garden, then a water-lily pond spanned by a Japanese bridge. He painted them for thirty years. Further downstream, the road passes beneath the ruins of Château Gaillard and reaches Rouen. On the Place du Vieux-Marché, a cross marks the spot where Joan of Arc was burned, on 30 May 1431.

On the coast at Étretat, a path runs along the top of the chalk cliff to the Porte d’Aval and the Needle. Boudin and Courbet painted them. So did Monet, again and again. The painting that gave Impressionism its name, ‘Impression, Sunrise’, shows the port of Le Havre. The Pont de Normandie then crosses the estuary to Honfleur and its Vieux Bassin. Twenty minutes from Honfleur, Trouville and Deauville face each other: the fish market on one side, the Planches boardwalk on the other.

The trip ends at Mont Saint-Michel, a granite rock topped by a Benedictine abbey founded in 966. Together with its bay, it has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1979. The tides here are among the strongest in Europe: the sea, so they say, comes in ‘as fast as a galloping horse’. From the car park on the mainland, you reach the ramparts by free shuttle or on foot over the footbridge. Then you climb to the abbey on foot, by the Grande Rue.

The tapestry museum in Bayeux is being renovated. The embroidery is on show at the British Museum in London from September 2026 to July 2027. In Bayeux, you can still visit Notre-Dame Cathedral, where it was displayed every summer. In Caen, William founded the Abbaye aux Hommes, and his tomb lies in the choir of the church.

The beaches of 6 June 1944

On 6 June 1944, more than a hundred and fifty thousand Allied soldiers landed on five beaches known by code names: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. At Omaha Beach, American losses were the heaviest of the day. Above the beach, the American cemetery at Colleville lines up more than nine thousand graves facing the sea.

At Arromanches, the caissons of the artificial harbour, towed across from England, still rise out of the water at low tide. At the Pointe du Hoc, the plateau is still pitted with bomb craters. On 6 June, the US Rangers scaled its cliff on ropes.

What not to miss

1. 1Monet’s gardensThe Clos Normand and the water-lily pond, open from spring to autumn.
2. 2Château GaillardRichard the Lionheart’s fortress, built in two years above a bend in the Seine.
3. 3Rouen CathedralThe façade Monet painted, beneath the tallest spire in France, at 151 metres.
4. 4The cliffs of ÉtretatThe Porte d’Aval, the Needle and the Manneporte, along the clifftop path.
5. 5HonfleurThe Vieux Bassin, its narrow façades and the church of St Catherine, built of wood by ships’ carpenters.
6. 6The American Cemetery at CollevilleRows of white crosses above Omaha Beach.

Normandy in pictures

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Claude Monet’s house at Giverny.

The Norman table

Normandy cooks with cream and butter, and drinks the apple. Cider and perry are sold at the farm gate, calvados ages in the cask, and pommeau, a blend of apple must and calvados, is served as an aperitif. In the Pays d’Auge, the cider route runs through Beuvron-en-Auge and Cambremer.

The cheeses bear the names of villages: camembert, livarot, pont-l’évêque, neufchâtel. On the coast, bouchot mussels and scallops, for which Port-en-Bessin is one of the great harbours. And at Mont Saint-Michel, Mère Poulard’s omelette, whisked by hand since 1888.